Morning Briefing: $1 billion Hong Kong insurance business could be sold

by Steve Randall13 Jan 2016

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Morning Briefing: $1 billion Hong Kong insurance business could be sold

$1 billion Hong Kong insurance business could be sold
The insurance business of Hong Kong’s Dah Sing Financial Holdings could be put up for sale with a price tag of $1 billion, Reuters reports. The company holds one of the region’s largest family-owned banks and could be about to offload its life insurance firm along with the life insurance division of its banking subsidiary.

Brown & Brown acquires BayRisk
Brown & Brown Insurance Services of California Inc. has acquired certain assets of BayRisk Insurance Brokers of San Francisco. The BayRisk team will relocate to Brown & Brown’s Lafayette office of Sitzmann Morris & Lavis and the combined business will be headed by Matthew M. Sitzmann. BayRisk principal Kevin Milroy said that the two firms share common objectives. BayRisk was founded in 1935 and generates annual revenues of around $2.5 million.

Former AIG executive makes Lemonade
Ty Sagalow, former president of AIG’s product development division, has been appointed chief insurance officer of peer-to-peer insurer Lemonade. Sagalow has a long history in the insurance industry having also held senior roles at Zurich. As one of the founding team at Lemonade he says that his time at traditional big insurance companies led him to where he is now: "I concluded that true disruptive innovation is almost impossible within the framework of legacy carriers. I joined Lemonade because only a company born of technology, the sharing economy and behavioral economics can truly re-architect what insurance should look like." Lemonade is due to launch in the first half of this year.

Irish government puts pressure on insurers over floods
Insurance firms in Ireland may be forced to cover the cost of floods unless they alter policies to protect businesses and homes in flood-prone areas. The government says that in areas where flood defenses have been implemented it cannot understand why insurers are still refusing to offer cover. At a meeting held Tuesday, which was attended by insurance heavyweights AIG, Aviva and RSA among others, the government said that as a last resort it could subsidize insurer’s costs in insuring flood-risk properties.